Asklemmy

You go to your father's funeral to honor your father's memory. He isn't going to bar his sisters from attending his funeral, that would be wildly out of the norm. When your dad dies, go to his damn funeral. This beef you have with his sisters is immaterial.

placating him on a thing like this means accepting my father has become a 5 year old

Your father expecting you to attend his funeral is pretty fucking standard. It's a colossally large dick move to not attend your own father's funeral just because you have a grudge against his sisters. Be a fucking adult and bear the presence of a few people you don't like for a few hours.

In my opinion, your stance is madness. You say you’re treating your father like an adult, but you aren’t acting like one yourself.

Adults tolerate minor discomforts to honor the ones they love. Adults make small talk or avoid people they don’t like at important events while still successfully showing their attendance.

Children prioritize their own small emotions and grievances over the needs and dignity of their parents because they don’t know any better or have any perspective.

So, which kind of son/daughter are you going to be?

His request seems reasonable, and from the information at hand, it seems you’re being a bit selfish.

If you care about your father, you can tolerate some insufferable people for a couple hours to honor him. You don’t even have to socialize. You’re there for him, not them.

Assuming you love your father, I advise you to reconsider your position and go to the funeral. It seems to matter a lot to him. Be kind to him, go, ignore your aunts. Sometimes, it is not that hard to make the world a better place.

But it feels worse to pretend I respect those lying assholes or to listen to their boring life I don’t care about.

It is even worse.

Yes. You're being a dick.

Elephants aren't religious (as far as I know) yet even they will gather to say goodbye to a family member. When the day comes, you'll want to too.

2 aunts love to pretend everything is fine, they excel doing that on funerals and weddings, then stab you in the back as soon as you're not within ear distance, either need drama to feel important or have way too much free time.

Okay? If shitty people do shitty things, let it roll off you like water off a duck's back.

It kinda sounds like you let what other people do affect you deeply. Maybe work on giving fewer fucks about people's drama and giving more fucks about what's important to you. I know that's easy for me to say, but it is an attitude that can be cultivated.

Sometimes you just have to suck it up and deal with it. You'd be making a huge mistake not going

You will be making a terrible, stupid and wholly avoidable mistake that can never be undone if you allow others to keep you from attending your own fathers funeral because they make you uncomfortable.

The reasons to visit a funeral are:

1. If it helps you process your own grief
2. If you can/want to help others process their grief

If, when your father dies, you feel overpowered with emotions, you should consider going, because a ritualized, socialized process like this can really help you process the sadness in a healthier way. If you care about your mother or other relatives and think your attendance will help them process the loss, you should go. Don't let your annoying aunts ruin your mental health or relationships with people you care about.

If neither of those applies, you are fully justified in skipping the event.

As for what to tell your father: I would say a white lie is justified in this particular case, whatever you decide to do in the end. He will not know whether or not your attend. Yes, this is treating him like a child; however, by manipulating you to attend an event which definitionally will not affect his life in any way, he is already being childish. Unfortunately this is how some people are, it doesn't mean you can't love or respect them in other aspects.

Go, honor your father, and celebrate the death of any future obligations you have to your shitty aunts.

This isn't about religion, even if you're trying to make it about religion. You want to get out of your father's funeral because it makes you uncomfortable.

Life is full of uncomfortable things, you'll need to get used to it. There's thousands of times you'll need to suck it up and be around people you don't like because it's the respectful thing to do.

I'm agnostic, used to be atheist. I thought the same thing. Your fathers funeral, family dinners, respectful times, you're not "making a stand" you're being whiney and immature. Atheists celebrate Christmas, go to weddings and funerals. We just sit there silently and respectfully. That's how we actually want to be viewed outside of a religious context.

Figure out the reason you don't actually want to go and then learn from it. That's what growing up is.

OP funerals are for the living, not for the dead. Don’t attend the dumb shit ceremony and have whatever ceremony help helps you deal with your grief. If anyone has a problem with that, tell them to go to hell.

I can see where you are coming from but I don't think this is the hill to die on and I think you should go to the funeral if you are able to. I also have relatives I strongly dislike, but if we are simultaneously at a funeral or a wedding or something, I just don't talk to them. If they have hurtful things to say about me (I know they do) I don't care because their opinions don't matter to me.

Some of these responses are so nuts that they might be your aunts conspiring to fuck with you. Or caterers desperate to sell one more plate. It’s like they never visit graves or even talk about the person that died again. Are you even ever going to see these people again?

Fuck what your dad wants. Ask your mom/siblings if they need the support, if you like them. And if you do go, you can literally fart on your aunts. I can’t fathom why people want you to engage with people who make your life worse for no gain. Yeah, smile for your boss because you need the paycheck, but this?

What do you want to do?

Also, should you let your aunts keep you away from your father's funeral, if their presence is the major issue?

If your father has been good to you, and you can be there, maybe you can fulfil a request of his?

But it feels worse to pretend I respect those lying assholes or to listen to their boring life I don’t care about.

Do you have to? You could ask that you be excused from such convos and avoid them, right?

Not sure if you have some specific issues with your aunts tho, so do ignore this if there is some significant thing that is not considered

Others have already said it, funerals are for the living. As long as you're honest with yourself (this doesn't seem to be about religion, rather shitty family) and you understand the consequences of your actions, you're an adult, do what you want.

Will it cause a scandal if you don't go? Probably. Is that something you're prepared for? Can you deal with that fallout?

The people in this thread exclaiming you must go, it's family! likely don't come from families with shitty relations and themselves feel some societal obligation to go to a funeral no matter what. Geography doesn't matter for honouring the dead. You go to comfort and commiserate with the survivors. If that's not important to you, do it in your own way. There is no wrong way to grieve or mourn someone's passing (obviously within reason).

Like a lot of other people are saying: Go to the funeral

A funeral happens once for someone, and that's it. There's no other opportunity to attend. So weighing missing a single opportunity to respect your father (and it sounds like you care for him) and provide closure for yourself, versus petty squabbles from other family members doesn't make sense to me. I've been to funerals with family members I've disliked, and I just ignored them and stood away from them during the service; so I'm wondering why you wouldn't be able to do the same? I feel like there might be something more going on. Either between you and the problematic family members; or your own mental wellbeing.

Please consider that if you miss it, you may regret it. Especially considering that the reason for missing it would be a deliberate choice, and it's over gossip. As you get older, you may find that you will care very little about gossip; especially if it's from people you dislike. So you may come to realize in the future that you missed your father's funeral over effectively nothing

I've always been taught that attending someone's funeral is one of the greatest good deeds you can do for someone. They're no longer here, so they can't pay you back; and sometimes it's really difficult to attend both by having to stop everything you're doing to make it, and emotionally. So there's always been an emphasis on attending funerals in my life

I mean… I’ll be the one to say it: he’s not gonna know.

Do what you want and need to in order to maintain your sanity. Placate him with a white lie - and it is a white lie - to make him feel better, if you want to. But maintaining your boundaries and avoiding people you find utterly caustic isn’t “childish”. In fact, I’d call it a consummately adult behavior.

You sound angry. Are you sure you're angry about this and not about him dying?

Funerals, among other things, are an event that reminds us that there are things more important than the petty shit we squabble about and hold against one another. Whatever flaws we all have, we are all human, we are all going to die someday, and we are all going to lose those we love if we don't die first. It's a time to set all that petty shit aside and remember that.

You can't tell people somebody can't go to a funeral, especially a family member. It's not about societal norm, it's about respect. Also, who cares if those assholes would be there. You wouldn't be there for them, you'd be there for your father.

If you skip his funeral, you'd be doing him a huge disrespect, but if that's what you want, in your own word: knock yourself out.

Hard to say, there's not a lot given on your relationship between you and your father to go on.

But in general, you should probably go unless you have a major beef with him specifically.

I often wonder about this situation for myself tho. By the time they die (unless of course something big happens), all of the grandparents will be dead (Mom's parents already are, Dad's dad is dead (which is GREAT news) already), Mom's last sister will probably be dead, Dad's brothers family is kinda just strangers. Both of them are very Republican churchy people, Dad's brother is too, his wife has an impossibly thick accent (to the literal point where all of us just kinda smiling and nodding and try to avoid conversations with her), and my 2 cousins are much younger than me (about 13-15 years younger) and we don't have any regular contact with them other than maybe Christmas. But they're just as brainwashed as my parents, so I don't actually want relationships with any of my family at all besides my siblings and their kids.

I don't want to go to the funeral(s) because it will be at a church. I've already decided to never go to a church outside of a wedding or funeral, but that doesn't mean I'm eager to go back, especially to my childhood church. I don't want to be exposed to any of those people at all. I have no relationships with any of them, and definitely don't want to. I think they all assume I go to some other church now, and if that dam bursts it's gonna become a scene. Unless I find a way to get a grip. Religion and church... I don't know if I can even claim the word "triggers me" because I didn't experience a singular moment of clear abuse, but it sends me up the wall with some kinda of feelings, as I was ONLY exposed (outside of some grocery store trips) to people from church before Mom finally gave up homeschooling, so I had absolutely zero secular social life until just before I could get a driver's license. It took until I hit 30 before I finally had the moment where it hit that church was total bullshit. It was a weird slow ramp until that moment, but it was a very important singular moment to me.

Anyway, tldr is I don't care about anyone that would show up at all. Except for my siblings. I highly dislike almost every one of them, outside of maybe Dad's coworkers (but only because I don't know them) and my friends (from back in church days) that I would be fairly neutral with, even tho so if them (afaik) are still in the religion.

I mean if they die separately it'll be more difficult to skip out, but if they die together (and still no will documented) we'll probably just bury em and split everything up evenly (whatever there is after selling estate anyway). Even the half of my siblings that is still sorta religious have little regard or memory of any of the people at the church, and the other half definitely share my feeling on it.

But one of the religious half is a funeral director, so he might try to make something out of it, but would probably get shut down. If they put in some advanced desire thing we'll probably abide by it, but if they don't, time to toss the bodies and run, shipping the funeral process. Dad's brother can just be mad about it, fuck that conservative bastard.

Why are you being nice to those aunts if you dont talk to them or care ? If your dads gone and you aren't keeping things amicable for his sake there'd be no reason not to tell them theyre pieces of shit (who no doubt voted maga). I'd still go, either ignore or tell off the assholes, and be done with them.

The worst things in this world are family and neighbors, becuase theyre forced upon you and you can't choose them. Best you can do is go no contact.